The 10 Most Insane Medical Practices in History

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Have you ever been left with the impression after a thorough poking, prodding and testicular cupping at the doctor's office that perhaps they don't always know what's best? The thought is usually pushed from your mind, after all these people had to go through years of school and thousands of dollars of their wealthy parents' money to get where they are! If you can't trust them about your health, who can you trust?

Here's the thing though, doctors have a long storied background of not knowing what the hell they're doing. History is filled with stories of hilarious medical ineptitude, and in all likeliness, today's medical practices will be similarly snorted at 100 years down the road. In other words, if you're looking to justify your medical phobia so you can rationalize not getting that ever-growing lump on your neck checked out, you're in the right place.

#10. Children's Soothing Syrups

In the 19th century, people were simply too busy churning butter, waxing their moustaches or changing in and out of 15 layers of undergarments every time they went to take a piss to be bothered with disobedient children. To aide the stressed 19th-century mother, a series of "soothing syrups," lozenges and powders were created, all which were carefully formulated to ensure they were safe for use by those most vulnerable members of the family. Oh, no, wait. Actually, they pumped each bottle full of as many narcotics as it could hold.

You can't say the soothing syrups weren't effective, as long as you didn't mind your toddler being strung out on the midnight oil or, you know, dead. That's right, the terrible 2s weren't just a cutesy euphemism back then. Kids were not only at their brattiest but also often died, in many cases after their parents tried to cure the aforementioned brattiness with narcotic concoctions that would give Lindsay Lohan a nose bleed.

#9. The Curative Powers of Mercury

Mercury is pretty neat stuff. The shiny silvery liquid has fascinated humans for millennia (there's evidence people used it as early as 1500 BC) and will undoubtedly continue to fascinate far into the future when shape-shifting Robert Patrick clones overtake the planet. How could something so awesome not be good for you?

That was the thinking for centuries, when Mercury was used to treat pretty much anything and everything. Scraped your knee? Just rub a little mercury on it. Having some problems with regularity? Forget fiber, time to get some mercury up in there! If you lived more than 100 years ago, you simply weren't considered healthy if you weren't leaking silver from at least one orifice.

Mercury, as we now know, is toxic as hell. Symptoms of mercury poisoning include chest pains, heart and lung problems, coughing, tremors, violent muscle spasms, psychotic reactions, delirium, hallucinations, suicidal tendencies, restless spleen syndrome, testicular twisting and anal implosion. OK, we just made the last few up, but they barely looked out of place on that horror show list of symptoms did they?

It's a testament to just how cool a substance Mercury is that people kept trying to cure shit with it for 1,000 years after everybody who ingested it dropped dead. "Yes my Lord, I'm afraid another member of your court has perished. The autopsy showed it was Silver Liver Syndrome. Not even the gallons of wicked-awesome Mercury we fed him could bring him back to health."

There was a silver lining, though, as it helped to fight the spread of STDs. Mercury was used as a cure for syphilis and to its credit, the "cure" usually resulted in one less person with syphilis in the world. It's generally believed Mozart was poisoned by mercury-based syphilis cures, which contradicts the film Amadeus in which he was killed by writing too much music somehow.

#8. Calm Your Cough with Heroin

In the late 19th century people apparently took cough suppression seriously. We're talking "I'm-going-to-take-me- some-heroin-to-calm-this-cough" level serious, here. We know Victorians were sticklers for social etiquette and wheezing your head off was probably considered frightfully rude, but we can't imagine tying off and shooting some horse in the middle of a dinner party would go over terribly well, either.

Well you probably don't need us to tell you how addictive and destructive a drug heroin really is, but just in case ... Heroin? Might want to avoid that stuff. On the upside, it actually does suppress coughs, so if you do decide to become a junkie at least you'll save on buying Halls.

Heroin, by the way, was originally developed by Bayer. You know, those friendly folks behind harmless old aspirin.

Oh, and while we're taking on the man, we should also mention that Bayer used to be called IG Farben, a pharmaceutical and chemical conglomerate that allegedly sponsored experiments by Nazi torturers. How is this not at the center of every single Tylenol ad campaign: the fast acting pain reliever that has never sponsored Nazi torture camps.

#7. Electrical Impotence Cures

Men have been desperately searching for solutions to their malfunctioning members since Grok the caveman clubbed a cavewoman, drug her to his cave only to drag her back out again a half hour later with an embarrassed look on his face and muttering excuses about how tired he is. In the late 19th century, the wonders of electricity became to be known to the common person. Surely this marvelous new technology could be used to heat things up in the boudoir, right?

Electrified beds, elaborate cock shocking electric belts and other strange devices were advertised as being able to return "male power" and prowess by making your penis rise to electrified attention like Frankenstein's 6-inch-tall monster.

What's fascinating is that you can find ads for more than one brand of electric dick-shock belt. That seems to indicate that the dick-shock belt industry somehow survived the negative word of mouth from the first dick-shock belt.

By "word of mouth," we mean the incoherent screams of the first customer which could presumably be heard in the next town.

#6. Lobotomies

Imagine if you will. You're sitting on your psychiatrist's couch, pouring your tortured heart out about how depressed you are. He listens, jotting notes on a piece of paper and nodding intently. "I think I have the solution to your depression," he says as he produces a 10-inch-long ice pick. "I'm going to jam this into your eye socket, then put it into your brain using this mallet over here. Then, I'll wiggle it around so that it shreds part of your brain. Then you won't be depressed any more. Just lie still."

Congratulations hypothetical version of yourself living in the 1940s, you've just been lobotomized! Lobotomies were a popular fad for the first half of the 20th century and were floated as a "cure" for pretty much any mental issue you can name, from conditions as serious as schizophrenia to something as mild as depression or anxiety.

The inventor of the lobotomy was given a Nobel Prize for it in 1949. Doctors claimed the "ice-pick-to-the- freaking-eye" method of lobotomy would be as quick and easy as a trip to the dentist. By 1960, parents were getting them for their moody teenage children.

This practice didn't hang around as long as some on our list, but still some 70,000 people were lobotomized before somebody figured out that driving a spike into the brain probably was not the answer to all of life's problems.